With factories thats exactly what happened. They didn’t fix any specific third party business, they improved the network of factories and what any factory could do.
There are numerous communities in the US who are dealing with toxic plumes in their groundwater, and their solution has not been to improve "the network of factories and what any factory could do," whatever that vague statement means. So no, that is far from "exactly what happened."
The typical response to pollution is to impose penalties on the offending parties. Nobody owes you their time and labor to improve a wasteful piece of technology.
>The factories didn't disappear is the actual point.
The factories have disappeared after being shut down due to pollution violations [1][2], and communities organize to shut down factories due to pollution [3].
Again, the people who protested these noncompliant factories and had them shut down had nothing to do with the development of cleaner processes. The reason for this is because they have no desire or obligation to do so. If you invent some tech that dumps trash in my yard, it's your job to fix it, not mine, regardless of how super cool you think that tech is.
